


All Things Must Pass

by mydeira, Sadbhyl



Series: Responsible Adults (aka, The Menageaverse) [95]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 04:57:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/757304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydeira/pseuds/mydeira, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sadbhyl/pseuds/Sadbhyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war goes on, but those on the sidelines can only sit and wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Things Must Pass

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published November 7, 2005
> 
> I hated writing this story. I don’t want it to be done . . . Takes place during the final days of Chosen, with references to S4 of AtS. This is it, folks. It’s with heavy heart that I write my final full chapter in the ‘Verse. I can’t thank Mydeira enough for letting me play in her world all this time. I’ve grown so much in the course of it, and I owe it all to her and to Joyce, Giles and Ethan. Thanks, guys.

The constant tide of power that had surged through his veins while he had served the First was gone. All that remained was pain. Regardless of the cushions beneath him, he felt every jolt and jounce, fighting back each surprised cry of pain they invoked. The young girls lying next to him weren’t as disciplined, whimpering as the jostling aggravated their already battered bodies, crying softly in pain and fear in between.

“Hang in there, girls,” Joyce’s voice came, motherly and reassuring, from the front seat. “It won’t be long now.”

Ethan took comfort in it as well.

Consciousness was still a hit or miss proposition. He had been in and out so much, he wasn’t sure how long they had been on the road. He remembered Ripper and Spike coming in with a makeshift litter and easing him onto it before carrying him downstairs and loading him into the back of Joyce’s car. He had felt Ripper’s calloused hand gently stroke his cheek, and then they were gone, coming back a few moments later with the little girls lying next to him, victims of the bomb he had had planted. He would have found that ironic if he weren’t hurting so bad.

“The baby’s not moving anymore,” Anya’s soft voice was barely audible over the song of the wheels on the road.

“That’s normal, honey,” Joyce said soothingly. But even having been absent from her for the last three months, Ethan could still identify the tension in her voice. “You’ve been running around a lot. He’s just gone to sleep.”

“It’s been days now.” Her words were flat, uninflected. “I think . . . I think maybe it knows there’s no point.”

“Do you want someone to look at you when we get to the hospital?”

“I want Xander.” Her voice sounded small even in the close confines of the car.

They continued in silence after that.

After what might have been hours or centuries, the car pulled up under bright halogenic lights strong enough to penetrate the mask of his swollen eyelids. Ethan heard the car doors open and instinctively reached out to grab Joyce’s arm, crying out in pain as he overextended. She was at his side in an instant. “Shh, we’re here, it’s safe.”

“Don’t . . .” he fought to force the words out past the pain. “Don’t leave me here.”

She stroked his hair gently. “I won’t. I’ll be right here with you. You won’t be alone this time.”

“No.” He forced his eyes open to meet hers. “I don’t want to stay here if this is the end.”

Her delicate features twisted in doubt, but she didn’t argue with him. “Alright, just let me talk to Angel.” She pressed her lips to his forehead and then was gone. He let his eyes close again. It hurt too much to keep them open.

The girls were unloaded, presumably to be wheeled in to the tender mercies of the hospital staff. The seat next to him shifted as the back was raised into place again, and then Joyce was there, the soft scent of her perfume and the warmth from her body giving him comfort.

A moment later the driver’s door opened and the whole car shifted as someone climbed behind the wheel. “The limo will go on once the rest of the girls are squared away,” a darkly tenured voice informed them as the Cherokee’s engine roared to life again.

“Won’t the hospital ask a lot of questions about how they got hurt?” Joyce sounded concerned.

“Not really. Things have been kind of . . . chaotic in LA the last couple of weeks.” The man seemed apologetic, as though it were somehow his fault. “The hospitals have been really busy. A lot of beatings. A lot of suicide attempts.”

Ethan couldn’t help but wonder what could have created such chaos on such a grand scale. And why he had never though of it.

They were silent after that. Joyce held his hand loosely, the fingers of her other caressing over his hair and face. He lost himself in the comfort of her touch, shutting out the agony that flared through him as the car rattled over poorly maintained LA streets. But even his endurance was reaching its breaking point by the time they pulled to a stop at last.

The driver got out and came around to the passenger door, presumably helping Anya out, although she remained largely and uncharacteristically silent. “I’ll be right back,” the man said as gently as he seemed able. “I’m going to get a stretcher and some help.” Ethan felt rather than saw Joyce nod before the passenger door closed again.

Now that the car was silent, Ethan could make his whispers heard. “Where are we?”

Joyce leaned closer so he could feel her warm breath on his cheek. “It’s an old hotel called the Hyperion. Willow told us about it. Angel and his friends use it as sort of a base of operations.”

“Where’s Rupert? And the others?”

“Back in Sunnydale.” The simple words were heavy with meaning. Back on the Hellmouth, waiting for glory or death.

Neither of them had any illusions which to expect.

After a few minutes, the back of the truck opened and someone climbed into the rear next to him. “Mrs. Summers,” a cultured voice with familiar Eton overtones said softly as gentle hands inspected Ethan’s injuries. “It’s good to see you again, despite the circumstances.”

“Mr. Wyndam-Pryce,” she answered civilly. “I didn’t realize you were friends with Angel. How have you been?”

“Please, call me Wesley.” Ethan noticed the man didn’t answer her question. “I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the car for a moment, please, Mrs. Summers.”

Joyce’s lips pressed against Ethan’s temple. “I’ll be right here.” Then she was gone, and smoothly professional hands were easing him onto the stretcher that had been put in her place. He didn’t cry out despite the waves of pain the gentle handling sent shattering through him. And then they were in motion, carrying him into the safety of the hotel, Joyce already there to take his hand again.

“Let’s take him up to one of the rooms,” the first man, Angel, instructed, and the stretcher turned to follow his voice.

Joyce spoke up, anticipating Ethan’s response to that plan. “We’d rather stay down here.”

“He’d really be more comfortable in a bed,” Wesley insisted.

Ethan squeezed her hand even as she spoke. “We both know what’s coming. Neither one of us wants to be shut away when it gets here.”

The men hesitated. “Over by the office,” Angel said finally, changing directions. A moment later they were setting him down, Joyce settling on the floor next to him. “Do you need anything?”

“No, we’re fine.” Ethan could almost hear the polite smile in her words.

“Well, if you do, don’t hesitate to ask any of us.”

“Thank you, Angel.”

The men moved off, and Ethan heard Joyce sorting through her bag. A moment later she was pinching his forearm and he felt a needle slide under his skin. He tried to protest, but it was already too late. She set the syringe aside and came back to stroke his hair comfortingly. “It’s the last of the morphine we got form the hospital back home. It will help you sleep.”

He could already feel the lethargy from it seeping through his muscles. “Where did you learn how to do that?” he asked in random curiosity.

“Rupert showed me how.”

“Ah. Well, he would know, wouldn’t he?” But already he was losing the capacity to discern the levels of meaning even in his own words.

His bafflement must have shown on his face, for Joyce leaned closer to press her lips to his forehead. “Get some sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

He gave up the fight for consciousness after that point, fading in and out at the whims of his body and the pain killers Joyce had administered. He wasn’t even sure when he was awake and when he was dreaming, the things he heard were so surreal.

“Are you sure?” an airy female voice with a quaint accent asked earnestly in one of his more lucid moments. “Because, don’t get me wrong, I love babies, who doesn’t love babies? Only, the last pregnant lady we had around here? Sort of tried to kill us all. And then, the baby? Well, it sort of kind of tried to kill us all, too. So you can kind of understand why pregnant women might make us kind of, well, jumpy.”

Joyce laughed softly at the babble. “It’s alright, Fred. It really is an honest to goodness baby. We have sonograms and everything. And Anya got over most of her mood swings after the first trimester . . .”

Ethan surrendered to the welcoming darkness and didn’t hear anything more.

He was roused again by the sound of metal rasping over metal.

“So we’re, what, some kind of rear guard?” a young man asked doubtfully.

Ethan realized the sound was a sharpening steel honing the edge of a metal weapon to a fine edge.

“If what the information Lilah gave you is accurate,” Wesley added, “then I’m not certain how much the five us of can do.”

The rasping stopped. “Buffy’s going up against this with a Watcher, a vampire, two witches, thirty teenage girls and a handful of civilians.” Angel’s words came harsh and challenging. “It’ll take a miracle for any of them to survive, let alone stop this. So I don’t care if it costs every one of us, we’re going to back her up on this. It’s the least we owe her.”

They were silent for a moment, and Ethan could almost see them staring each other down. “Well,” Wesley said more gently, breaking the tension, “it would seem like a girl who has come back from the dead twice would have a line on miracles. We shouldn’t write her off yet.”

“Still, maybe now would be a good time to find out just what we can expect from our new employers?” The young man’s suggestion was more of a question.

The silence this time was longer, and Ethan had already started to fade back into sleep when the metallic rasping started again. “Make the call.”

Ethan’s head felt a little more clear when he woke next, but it didn’t make the conversation any less surreal.

“But darling, don’t you see?” It was another strange man talking, this time with a musical voice that to Ethan’s ears had an alien thread through it. “Yeah, the hits are the ones that get noticed, but it’s the book numbers that carry the show. You’re the heart and soul of it, sweetheart!”

“Do you really think so?” Anya asked uncertainly.

“Honey, I know musicals, both Broadway and demonic. Those breakaway hits you’re so worried about? They’re just sound in the wind without the meatier stuff backin’ them up.” He paused for a moment, then said more seriously, “But that’s not what’s really bothering you, is it?”

Anya was silent for so long that Ethan thought he must have fallen asleep again. But then there was a sound of shifting bodies and a muffled sob, as though she were crying into someone’s chest.

“Oh, hey, no need for tears, sunshine!” the man crooned softly, soothingly, the music in his voice even stronger now. “Your little one is already singing away at her own song, and not a note out of place. So you just dry your eyes now, you hear?”

There was a pause, and then Ethan heard her sniff. “She?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you want it to be a surprise?”

“No, it’s not that. It’s . . .” She sniffed again, her voice clearer. “We’re having a girl?”

“Yes, sweet thing, you’re having a bouncing baby girl,” the man laughed.

“Xander wanted to name it Jesse if it was a boy.” The tinge of sadness was still in her words.

“Well, Jesse’s a fine name for a girl, too.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I think it’s beautiful.”

When Ethan woke up next, Ethan saw Joyce sleeping under an afghan on the bench sofa next to him. It took him a few minutes of just watching her sleeping to realize that he was actually able to open his eyes at all. He flexed his eyebrows, felt the lids of his eyes still swollen in their sockets, although not so much as to interfere with his vision anymore. Curious, he went on to do a careful inventory of his injuries, using slight flexes of muscle and joint to determine his status. Every movement caused pain to throb through him, but it was the dull agony of healing rather than the sharp, electric stabs of anything broken or torn. He would hurt like a son of a bitch for a long time to come. But he knew from experience that he would live.

That fact he knew he owed partly to Buffy’s stubborn determination and an even greater part to Tara’s growing mastery of the healing and defensive magics. That she had been able to bring him this far this fast spoke volumes to him of the resources she was learning to control. In twenty years, she would be a formidable power in her own right. The realization that he was in some part responsible for that was sobering.

“You look like you’re feeling better.” Joyce’s sleepy voice drew him from his reverie to see her looking down at him from her place on the couch.

He licked his lips carefully before trying to speak. “I think I am, actually.” It didn’t hurt to talk as much as he’d expected, so he went on to ask, “What time is it?”

“Almost dawn.”

That didn’t seem right. “How long was I asleep?”

She checked her watch, sitting up and stretching in that graceful, uninhibited way he never thought to see again. “Almost thirty hours.” She knelt down next to him, laying her hand across his forehead in the universal gesture of motherhood. “Are you hungry? I can get you something to eat.”

“Nothing I’d have to chew,” he said ruefully. “I’m lucky they didn’t break my jaw, but it’s tender all the same.”

“You’re going to look like you have five o’clock shadow for the next few days, anyway,” she said, gently trailing her fingers along the tender flesh of his cheek.

“I’m going to have five o’clock shadow and more.” He half-heartedly raised his tightly wrapped hands. “I hope you like me in a beard, my girl, because I won’t be shaving anytime soon.”

“I do,” she leaned forward to brush the faintest of kisses over his mouth. “But I can shave you, too, remember.”

He did, the memory of warm water and soap and her naked between his legs making him throb in a way that had nothing to do with pain.

She was gone only a few minutes before she came back with broth and applesauce, patiently feeding him while keeping up a steady flow of conversation. Even after the food was gone, she continued to talk, as though making up for all the conversations they had missed in the three months they had been apart. He just lay there, listening and watching her, grateful to be back in her presence.

From his position on the floor, Ethan was the first one to see the gentle sway of the chandelier, its arc widening quickly. Even as the word “Earthquake” formed on his lips, the low rumble deep in the bowels of the earth started, making the whole building rock in counterpoint to the swing of the chandelier. There was no time to move him, so Joyce threw her body over his head instead, covering her own with her hands. Throughout the lobby he heard the sounds of the others scrambling for cover under doorways and next to heavy pieces of furniture in the way that was nearly instinctive in anyone who had lived long in California. They swayed for brief moments before the tremors subsided, leaving them all covered in a fine sifting of dust but otherwise unharmed.

Joyce sat up so that Ethan could see everyone gathering in the lobby, all looking pointlessly at the ceiling. “How strong?” Angel asked, finally letting Ethan put the voice to a face, surprised to find it belonged to the vampire who had taken on Eyghon and won.

“Four,” Wesley answered, “four and a half at most.”

Their eyes met, ominous.

“Oh god, please don’t let it be an omen,” Joyce prayed softly still studying the ceiling. “Buffy says earthquakes are always an omen.”

“It’s not an omen,” Ethan said with grim certainty. When she looked down at him, he finished, “It’s a result.”

Her eyes widened in horror.

The tension in the group shifted, their actions more purposeful now. There was a radio in the office set to an all-news station, and a TV behind the reception desk that people would pause in front of, flick through the relevant channels and then move on when they didn’t find anything pertinent.

It took the Geologic Survey an hour to pinpoint the epicenter of the earthquake as downtown Sunnydale.

It was another fifteen minutes before anyone realized the entire town was gone.

They all stared, awe-struck, as the first pictures of the devastation came through. Even from his poor vantage point, his head slightly elevated by a few pillows, Ethan could tell there was nothing left, water from the river that had fed the now-vanished harbor rapidly filling the gaping pit where the town had once stood.

Wesley was the first to put their thoughts into words with a barely audible, “Dear God.”

“What does it mean?” the tiny little Southern girl asked in a timorous voice. “What happened? Did they win?”

“We won.”

Ethan had never been so happy to hear Ripper’s voice in his life.

He stood in the doorway, supporting Xander as they limped across the landing to the steps down into the lobby. With a sobbing cry, part joy, part disbelief, Anya rushed to her husband. Rupert stepped aside as the two reunited, his own eyes searching the room, finding Joyce first. Ethan saw something tight inside the man release as he moved towards her, not stopping until he had her tightly wrapped in his arms, his face buried in the comfort of her hair.

A moment later the doors burst open and girls flooded in, all limping and bleeding, all chattering away excitedly, leaving the residents of the Hyperion looking perplexed. Faith pushed through them, helping a tall black man make his way down the steps, followed closely by Tara with a first aid kit and a concerned expression on her face. Where there was Tara, Willow couldn’t be far behind, helping one of the more seriously injured girls down the steps.

Joyce pulled away from Rupert with obvious reluctance. “The girls?” she asked uncertainly. “Dawn and Buffy, are they . . .”

“They’re fine,” Rupert assured her. He kissed her forehead and turned her around to see her daughters coming in, each with a satchel in hand and talking in low, almost reverent tones. They stopped when they saw her, waited as she slowly mounted the stairs. She reached out to stroke Dawn’s hair, touch Buffy’s face and then suddenly they were all in each other’s arms, weeping and hugging and touching one another in joy and relief. They had all survived. There was reason to celebrate.

Ethan felt eyes heavy on him and turned to see Ripper making his way over, intense beneath the grime smearing his face and the mottling of blood on that ridiculous barn coat of his. He was intercepted by Angel, who caught his arm to draw his attention. “How did it go?”

Rupert looked at Ethan, communicating an almost invisible apology, before turning back to the vampire. “About as well as could be expected,” he answered in the even, controlled tones of his Watcher persona. “We lost seven of the girls. And Andrew. And . . .” he hesitated, a flicker of remorse clouding his face briefly. “We lost Spike.”

Ethan felt a pang at that. He had enjoyed the brash young vampire’s company. And he knew Joyce had a soft spot for him as well. Not to mention Buffy . . .

“I’m just surprised any of the girls survived,” Wesley said, interrupting Ethan’s train of thought. “Considering what they were up against, it would have been expected for them to make a poor showing.”

“They weren’t just girls,” Rupert corrected him. “They were Slayers.”

Wesley raised his eyebrows in surprise. “What, all thirty of them?”

“No, all of them. Every potential everywhere in the world was activated. Hundreds of them, all over the globe. It’s a new order, Wesley. Everything’s changed.”

“Buffy did that?” It was Angel’s turn to look stunned.

“No, Willow and Tara did that. We just held off the monsters until they could pull it off. The rest, well,” he hesitated, looking over towards Buffy, “Buffy will have to tell you the rest.”

“Where did you get such a daft plan?” Ethan asked, unwilling to surrender Ripper’s attention any longer.

He turned to look at Ethan with a smirk Ethan hadn’t seen in years. “We just asked ourselves, ‘What would Ethan do in a situation like this?’ and the craziest idea we came up with was the one we used.”

Ethan couldn’t help grinning in return. “Knew my good influence would have to rub off on you eventually.”

Ripper came over and crouched next to the cot, resting his elbows on his splayed knees to cross his blood-stained hands in between. “Now why doesn’t it surprise me to come back and find you just lying around when the rest of us are putting our lives on the line?”

Ethan wasn’t fooled. He had known the man for too long not to recognize the underlying timbre of compassion and concern in his voice. But this was how they communicated, even now. “I was about ready to scoop up Joyce and head for my villa in Spain, you were taking so damn long.”

“I don’t think you’ll be doing any scooping for a while,” he said sympathetically.

Ethan shrugged as much as he dared. “It’s the thought that counts.”

Ripper studied him until Ethan began to feel uncomfortable. “Spain, eh?”

“It’s nice this time of year.”

“I haven’t seen much of Spain.”

The concession in his words surprised Ethan.

“What’s this about Spain?” Joyce asked, coming up from behind to lay a hand on Ripper’s shoulder.

He reached up to cover her hand with his own larger one, craning his neck to look up at her. “We were just discussing taking you away from all this.”

“All what?” she scoffed. “All my responsibilities, my house, my business just got sucked down a great big hole.” She settled down on the floor between them, still holding Rupert’s hand even as she curved her other arm carefully around Ethan’s head. “So, where are we going?”

“Ethan’s villa in Spain.”

She looked down at him in amazement. “You have a house in Spain?”

He chuckled, grateful that he could still surprise her after all this time. “Yes, I have a house in Spain. Complete with vineyards, servants and a swimming pool.”

“You’ve been holding out on me,” she teased, stroking the hair back from his forehead. Then her expression darkened. “Where’s the nearest Hellmouth?”

Ethan didn’t actually know the answer to that, so they both turned to Rupert. “Rome, I think,” he provided after a moment’s thought.

She relaxed. “Better and better. So when do we go?”

There would be no trips to Spain. Not for a while at least. Ripper had to rebuild the Council, literally from the ground up, and protect all the new little Slayers they had created. Joyce needed to rebuild her family and her own life. And Ethan needed to spend all his energy for the foreseeable future trying to rebuild his shattered body. But it was enough that they were together and planning for the future. A future two days ago he hadn’t thought they had.

“You know,” he couldn’t resist teasing her, “I only allow nude sunbathing at my home.”

She smiled and leaned seductively closer. “I think I can handle that.”

“Yes,” he purred, “but can Ripper?”

The both turned to look at their lover again. His enigmatic smile gave Ethan great hope for the future.


End file.
